


7/02/2019: Reincarnation

by pop_incognito



Series: 365 Drabbles [38]
Category: Free!
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Reincarnation, Soulmates, Tags Are Only Mentioned/Referenecd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 16:13:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17728523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pop_incognito/pseuds/pop_incognito
Summary: While recovering from his eye surgery, Nao dreams of a life he lived once, long ago.





	7/02/2019: Reincarnation

**Author's Note:**

> This probably deserves to be a 10k oneshot, but I don't have the brainspace to commit to that right now, so add this to the list of things I have to turn into full fics once I've finished Run to Paradise. Anyway. I hope everyone likes this!

_“Please! Don’t cut down the tree!” Nao begs, thin arms wrapped around the woodsman’s waist, tugging ineffectually as the brawny man tries and succeeds in shrugging the young boy off. “No!” his voice cracks, and Nao redoubles his efforts, nearly throwing himself against the man’s back and clawing at his shoulders. “Leave it be!”_

_The man growls, and reaches around to grab Nao by the back of the neck, flinging him off with a sharp swing of his arm. Nao yelps when he hits the ground with a harsh smack, head glancing off the ancient decorative stones surrounding the base of the sugi pine. “Why the hell do you care what happens to the tree?” the woodsman grunts, running his rough hands over the rust-coloured bark, finding a good spot to sink his axe into. “It’s just a tree, and I’ve been ordered to cut it down so a new shrine can be built here.”_

_“Build the shrine next to it,” Nao pleads, blood starting to drip down his face from his temple as he shakily gets to his knees. “My father’s great, great grandmother planted this tree over the grave of her husband – my family has looked after it for over two hundred years!” He drags himself to the woodsman’s feet and clings to the man’s ankle, sharp nails biting into leathery skin. “The tree has a soul, you can’t kill him!”_

_Nao remembers the story his father told him, of two flowers sprouting from the same seed and turning their heads to the sun. They were plucked by a child and put in a bunch, living and dying as flowers do. But the flowers woke up, in a different form – a fox and a hound chasing each other through the forest. The hound could not bring itself to kill the fox, and the fox had no wish to trick the hound. Then they became people, destined to find each other and fall in love over and over again. Boy met girl as the cycle continued, until he died, too, and she planted a sugi seed over his grave. As the tree grew, one half of a soulpair lived inside it, drawing the other half to it as the years went on. The bird who nested in its branches, the rabbit who lived in its roots, the child who built a swing and played by it for hours, and the people of Nao’s family who tended to it with love and care._

_“Please…” he says, looking up imploringly._

_Impatient with the young boy, the woodsman steps on the hand holding his other ankle, cracking fine bones and snapping frail wrists._

_Nao screams, curling in on himself as his vision goes hazy from the pain. “No!” he croaks, voice raw, and he watches in horror as the woodsman swings his axe._

_Tears roll down Nao’s cheeks. He can feel every hit of the sharp blade like a punch to the gut, his insides twisting and churning as he claws at the ground with his uninjured hand. It takes what feels like hours until the tree is almost cleaved completely from its trunk. Nao pulls himself up with the last of his strength even as he vomits into the grass, and throws himself between man and tree, blinded by tears and voiceless from screams._

_All it takes it a single miss swing of the axe, and tree and boy die together._

_The two halves of the flower seed are reunited once more, as the boy is buried in a rough coffin made of bloodstained sugi._

Nao jolts awake in bed, his heart hammering against his ribs uncomfortably. He presses his hands over the aching spot, hopes the pressure helps relive the phantom pain. The gauze over his eye itches something awful and he huffs, resisting the urge to pick at the peeling tape holding it to his face.

What was he dreaming about?

Reaching out in the darkness, Nao fumbles on his bedside table for the lamp switch. There’s a clatter as he knocks something to the floor, and Nao curses, finally finding the switch and flooding the room with light. “Shit,” he mutters, wincing and squinting his one eye against the brightness. “What did I knock over-?” Nao peers over the edge of his bed and freezes when he sees the small wooden statuette his mother had given him when he was much younger. A little wooden gannet perched on the back of a sleek tiger shark. She had said that it belonged to her grandfather, and he had carved it after a dream, turned from a piece of sugi saved from the tree his younger brother had died trying to protect.

Nao wraps his fingers around the statuette and reverently sets it back on his desk, his ears ringing eerily as his own dream starts to come back to him in dribs and drabs.

The phone stuffed under his pillow suddenly rings, and Nao lets out a little shriek in shock, flailing for a moment before snatching the device up and jamming it to his ear. “Natsuya?” he breathes without even checking the caller ID.

“Nao,” Natsuya whispers back, his voice sounding just as shaky as Nao feels. “I just had the most awful dream.”

Nao chokes, slamming the light off as he forgets what he was looking for in the first place. This is a conversation for darkness. “Tell me about it,” he says, in both a rhetorical and a genuine way.

“Don’t laugh,” Natsuya begs, and Nao promises instantly that he won’t, would never. “I was a tree. And you were a boy. But first you were a rabbit, and a bird, and a beautiful woman.” Natsuya swallows. “I kept watching you die and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Natsuya sounds like he is crying, and Nao is seconds away from joining him. “I don’t want you to die. Not ever again.”

 _Not ever again_. How many times have Nao and Natsuya died over the years?

Nao presses the phone to his cheek hard enough to hurt. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asks hesitantly.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Natsuya counters. “We’re like two flowers-”

“-who sprouted from the same seed,” Nao finishes.

Countless times they have been born, and lived, and found each other, and so they will continue to do so, long after this aquatic chapter has come to its end.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment and leave kudos!


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